Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot gives GamesIndustry International his outlook on free-to-play games as a way of combating PC piracy, explaining the difficulties presented by serving an audience they perceive to be 93-95% thieves:

"We want to develop the PC market quite a lot and F2P is really the way to do it," said the French CEO. "The advantage of F2P is that we can get revenue from countries where we couldn't previously - places where our products were played but not bought. Now with F2P we gain revenue, which helps brands last longer.

"It's a way to get closer to your customers, to make sure you have a revenue. On PC it's only around five to seven per cent of the players who pay for F2P, but normally on PC it's only about five to seven per cent who pay anyway, the rest is pirated. It's around a 93-95 per cent piracy rate, so it ends up at about the same percentage. The revenue we get from the people who play is more long term, so we can continue to bring content."

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DukeFNukem wrote on Aug 22, 2012, 11:01:Steam seems to be have gotten it right. People will purchase software at the right price versus pirating it. The days of paying $50-$60 for games may be diminishing because of the sheer number of choices available today. The number of games a person can choose to buy at any one time is increasing exponentially. The number of game sales is inversely proportionate to its price. The cheaper the game becomes, generally, the more the sales increase. These people complaining about piracy all the time need to start thinking smarter. Times are harder. More competition means it not as easy to get filthy rich like in the past but if you think smarter and find solutions it can still be done as many people are doing through Steam. I just can't see these arguments about piracy being valid when there are many success stories through Steam.It's probably easier to sell a million copies of a game at $10.00 than it is to sell a 100,000 copies of a game at $60.00. There is a sweet spot somewhere. Stop complaining and figure it out.I stopped paying $60.00 for games a long time ago. The most I pay is $10 now days. If I have to wait 2 years after its release so be it. I will wait. And I don't pirate it anytime before. Theres no reason to. There's enough quality $10.00 games to keep me busy the 2-years Im waiting on $60 games to drop.

I paid $60 for the disappointment that was Rage on PC. What a mess. "From the creators of Doom and Quake", such amazing technology and original games, and we get the bore that is Rage. $60 for 10 hours of near waste in Rage.

But I did buy it legally! 93%-95% piracy? If every game on Steam has been purchased legally (and I think this is basically true), then there is no way it is 93%! Who said it that they couldn't/wouldn't be in the business with numbers like that. Exactly. Running a grape/wine farm in France somewhere will be more profitable than the PC games business with numbers like that, he should switch professions!